South Korean true crime fan turned murderer sentenced to life in prison

South Korean woman Jung Yoo-jung, 23, was obsessed with crime shows and novels and scored highly on psychopath tests, according to local police.

She was fixated on the idea of “trying out murder” and used a tutoring app to meet an English-language teacher, whom she stabbed to death in May in a brutal killing that shocked South Korea.

Prosecutors asked for the death penalty, which is legal in the Asian nation, though an execution hasn’t been carried out since 1997. They characterised Jung as an unemployed loner who scouted for a victim for months while living with her grandfather.

Police said Jung’s phone records showed she had spent three months before the murder scouring the internet for tips on how to kill and hide a dead body.

She contacted more than 50 people and favoured women, asking them if they conducted lessons at their homes.

In May, Jung posed as a mother whose daughter needed English lessons and contacted her 26-year-old victim, who lived in the southeastern city of Busan. The victim’s identity has not been disclosed by police.

Jung showed up at the tutor’s house dressed in a school uniform she had bought online, prosecutors said.

After the teacher let Jung in, she launched at the woman, stabbing her more than 100 times in a frenzied attack that continued even after the victim had died.

She dismembered the woman’s body and took a taxi ride to dump some of the remains in remote parkland near a river, north of Busan.

Police said Jung had tried to “make it look like the victim had disappeared.”

“Jung kept the victim’s mobile phone, ID card and wallet, attempting to commit a perfect crime,” they said.

But the 23-year-old was caught when her taxi driver tipped off police about a passenger who had dumped a blood-soaked suitcase in the woods.

Police retrieved the case and found bloodstained clothes, while other items relating to the crime were found at Jung’s home.

Police believe Jung used crime novels and shows and movies for research.

Her library record showed she borrowed a number of crime stories in the months before the murder.

But Jung was also careless, police said. She took no effort to avoid CCTV cameras, which captured her entering and leaving the tutor’s home several times.

On Friday, a sentencing judge in the Busan District Court said the killing had “spread fear in society that one can become a victim for no reason” and “incited a general distrust” among the community.

Jung, who confessed to the crime in June, pleaded for lenience, saying she had suffered from hallucinations and other mental disorders at the time.

But the court rejected her argument, saying the crime had been “carefully planned and carried out, and it is difficult to accept her claim of mental and physical disorder”.

It was noted that Jung’s statements to police had frequently changed. Initially, she said she had only moved the body after someone else killed the woman, then later claimed that the killing had occurred as a result of an argument.

In the end, Jung confessed that her interest in committing a murder had been piqued by crime novels and TV shows.

She was sentenced to life in prison.